March 20, 2008

"Right Wing" White Preacher Decries Aborting of Black Babies

People for the (Liberal) American Way are touting this video as part of their "Right Wing Watch" program to identify, one presumes, incipient fascists and Nazis within the conservative community. (At least that is generally what is meant when an organization funds a program called "~ Watch" -- Klan Watch, Theocracy Watch, etc.) Here is Pastor Rod Parsley:

Never mind that fascism and Naziism are both leftist philosophies, variants of socialism; whispering such heresies to PAW is itself more evidence of Republofascism. Let's just accept the kooky liberal idea that fascists and Nazis are some form of extreme right-wingery.

But shouldn't even "brain-dead liberals" (I quote David Mamet) find it passing odd that such vehement right-wingers should be so considerate of the lives of black babies?

The issue comes up because a website called "The Truth About Trinity United Church of Christ" -- which may have some hidden connection to the Barack Obama campaign -- claims that Rod Parsley is "Senator McCain's Pastor," and directly equates Pastor Parsley to Pastor Jeremiah Wright:

It looks like my Pastor isn't the only one who believes that the government has been complicit in plots against blacks in America too. I wonder why this doesn't get as much play. If you closed your eyes they almost sound alike!

(John McCain says that Parsley is a "spiritual guide," but I can't find any corroboration that Parsley is "McCain's pastor.")

But are they really alike? Are the two pastors even slightly similar?

Apart from both having an irritatingly melodramatic speaking style, I see no similarity at all. And striking deeper to the point, I see absolutely nothing in the video of Pastor Parsley that would even raise my eyebrow -- despite the fact that I am pro-choice (up to a specific gestational point) and do not call myself conservative. Or liberal, either.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why PAW considers Parsley to be worthy of being "watched" by Right Wing Watch. We can certainly note that his condemnation of abortion is (dare I say it?) post-racial: In this particular sermon, he is appalled because a much larger percentage of black babies are aborted than white babies, and he blames Planned Parenthood.

In addition, Parsley also condemns public financing of abortions and the lack of outrage by people at the former.

Well, do abortions disproportionately kill black babies? In fact, yes they do... and nobody even denies it. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute's detailed survey of pregnancy and abortion in the United States (reported on BNet Business Network):

The abortion rates of black teenagers are also extremely variable compared with those of non-Hispanic whites. Nationally, abortions occur at a rate of 63 per 1,000 black teenagers-3.3 times the rate among non-Hispanic whites (19). Twenty-four states have data for both groups: In two of these, Arizona and South Carolina, the abortion rate among black teenagers is only 1.1-1.2 times that among non-Hispanic whites. In several other states, however, the differential is greater: New Jersey (8.6), Pennsylvania (5.5) and Minnesota (4.0).

This trend tends to be unremarked but not unnoticed on the liberal left: In 2005, University of Chicago economist and leftist Steven Levitt published Freakonomics, in which he noted the following (among other facts and factoids, some interesting and some very misleading):

Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.

What he didn't tell readers is the real reason for the correlation, which is rather less savory than the sanitized version in his book. Try this (warning! PC-violation alert)...

Black babies are legally aborted far more often than whites -- more than three times as often nationwide.

Blacks commit crime at a far higher rate than whites.

The increased abortion rate for blacks, therefore, leads to less crime.

Yet despite the utilitarian argument for more abortions (especially those subsidized by the government, which I suspect also go disproportionately to black abortions), anti-liberals (and now I do include myself) are utterly appalled that any sane person could celebrate crime reduction by pre-natal eugenics, as Professor Levitt does, though he conceals the fact.

But most astonishing of all is that the liberal press, which routinely accuses the Right of being inherently racist, also condemns the Right for opposing the aborting of black babies -- on grounds that wanting more black babies to be born, and opposing a procedure that steadily diminishes the number of blacks in comparison to whites, evidently makes conservatives "racist!"

Bill Bennett found this out very directly, as recounted by Jonah Goldberg in his must-read book Liberal Fascism, pp. 274-275: When Bennett decried Levitt's call for reducing crime by exterminating black babies, Bennett himself was accused of wanting to exterminate black babies. (No, I can't explain the "logic.")

And now a long rant by Pastor Parsley expressing his outrage that so many black babies are being aborted is offered as evidence that Parsley is just as racist as Jeremiah Wright. Who knew? "If you shut off your brain, they almost sound alike!"

It is true that Parsley calls the lopsided abortion of black babies "genocide," and he accuses Planned Parenthood of "systematically" engaging in it; but he never accuses the government of deliberately doing so... he just condemns them for giving tax money to those who do.

In his accusation against Planned Parenthood, however, he at least has historical accuracy on his side -- another great difference between Parsley and Wright. Planned Parenthood is the successor organization to the American Birth Control League, founded by Margaret Sanger; and Margaret Sanger -- the mother of birth control -- was an enthusiastic eugenicist. In particular, "she sought to ban reproduction of the unfit and regulate reproduction for everybody else," according to Goldberg, where Sanger's ranks of the "unfit" unabashedly included blacks:

In 1939 Sanger created the previously mentioned "Negro Project," which aimed to get blacks to adopt birth control. Through the Birth Control Federation, she hired black ministers (including the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.), doctors, and other leaders to help pare down the supposedly surplus black population. The project's racist intent is beyond doubt. "The mass of significant Negroes," read the project's report, "still breed carelesly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes... is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit." Sanger's intent is shocking today, but she recognized its extreme radicalism even then. "We do not want word to go out," she wrote to a colleague, "that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

Goldberg goes on to note that "it is possible that Sanger didn't really want to 'exterminate' the Negro population so much as merely limit its growth." That is, that the last quotation might mean "we don't want people to mistake our purpose." Still, the desire to limit the population of blacks fits disturbingly well into Planned Parenthood's enthusiasm for abortions today that disproportionately reduce the black population. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

In the end, I simply can find nothing objectionable in this entire clip -- other than the bombast, which is a speaking style I just don't like. In particular, I see no similarity whatsoever between Rod Parsley, who treats all races equally, and Jeremiah Wright, who elevates his own race above all others... and believes that whites run everything; that the white-run government makes repeated attempts to commit genocide against blacks (crack cocaine, AIDS); and that a "typical white person" automatically feels fear when she sees a black man.

I think you've slightly missed an implicit statement by the Obama camp in this one. By saying that Wright and Parsley are essentially saying the same things, what's being stated is not that Parsley is a racist.

To me, what the Obama campaign is saying is that it's clear, at least to the religious leaders in the US, that there is large-level opposition to the success of blacks in America.

This represents Obama's 180 degree turnaround from being the transracial candidate to being a typical black candidate. His remark about his grandmother was tantamount to severing his white half.

Look at everything he's said since this came out. He's no longer the "blite" candidate. He is now, in my opinion, officially aligning himself with the black vote in America. And this is one more example of it.

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